


A Shrubbery has Exploded in Our Living Room

by orphan_account



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Rampant shrubbery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-01
Updated: 2013-04-01
Packaged: 2017-12-07 04:21:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/744201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Sherlock is sulking, Mycroft is mysterious and John is just trying to work out what the hell happened to his flat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Shrubbery has Exploded in Our Living Room

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta-ed, not britpicked.
> 
> These characters do not belong to me yadda yadda etc etc etc.

When John came down for breakfast that morning, Sherlock was (unsurprisingly) already up and looked to have been so for several hours. “Tea?” yawned John as he shuffled into the kitchen, but he received no reply. One of those days then. He filled the kettle and leant on the bench to wait.  
The kitchen table was unusually empty of things, he noticed. No ‘borrowed’ lab equipment, no crawly things or dead bits in Tupperware containers. Odd.  
The only item present was a blank manila file, which seemed to be empty. Curious, John sipped his tea and picked up the file, but before he could open it he found it yanked out of his hand. “Mine.” snapped Sherlock, as he marched off into his room.  
He did not come out again until John went to bed.

****

Three days later, the table was still clear, Sherlock was still in a spectacularly bad mood for no apparent reason and the file had gotten bigger. “This for a case then?” John tried, picking up the folder. Sherlock just glared at him until he put it down and left for work.

***

“Are you just going to keep sulking forever?”  
Sherlock shot him a scowl that could turn a lake into a glacier.  
“I’m serious, Sherlock. Is there something wrong?”  
John gave up trying to get his obstinate flatmate to talk when he stormed off to his room in a strop for the fourth time that day.

***

Mycroft was in his chair when he got back from the clinic. “Oh.” _That’s just perfect._ “Hello Mycroft. Tea?”  
Mycroft frowned at him momentarily, before getting up and heading towards the door. “No thankyou, Doctor. I’m just off.”  
He was gone before John could say anything.  
There was another file on the table, next to the first. John avoided it.

***

The change in Sherlock’s mood was terrifying. One moment, he’d been glaring and huffing and actually growling at the second folder, but then there were two perfunctory knocks on the door downstairs and the man had leapt up like he’d been electrocuted. John just watched, bewildered, as he dashed down the stairs, wrenched open the door, and came back up a moment later with two large men carrying a large wooden crate between them. Sherlock was grinning, almost manically, as he directed them to set it down underneath the table. He took the folders with him when he went back to his room.

***

Leaves. The crate was full of leaves.  
Well, branches covered in leaves. Long, twiggy branches covered in feathery, fern-like leaves.  
John knew this because when he came downstairs for breakfast the crate was open and it looked like a shrubbery had exploded in the living room.  
Upon closer inspection, the twiggy branches turned out to be connected to very short trunks, which were buried halfway up in glass jars full of soil. Sherlock was nowhere to be seen, but John decided to steer clear of the unknown plants until someone confirmed that they weren’t going to poison him.

***

Three more crates and another folder were in the flat when he got back. Sherlock was deeply engrossed in grimacing at the latest file and didn’t answer an offer for coffee.  
Later that night, John was woken twice by loud thumps coming from downstairs. 

***

A shrubbery had exploded in the living room.  
The trees had grown remarkably fast over the week they had been there. Most of them now stood between a metre and two metres high, and were nearly half a metre wide.  
Small and medium-sized boulders littered the floor, and there were strips of lawn covering half the room. The sofa had vanished, as had almost every other piece of furniture expect (and here John snorted in half indignation, half amused resignation) Sherlock’s armchair. Sherlock had even taken the curtains down, to let as much sunlight in as possible. The overall effect was quite beautiful, in a surreal sort of way, but it was also 6am on a Tuesday and John had slept badly due to Sherlock’s sudden interest in indoor gardening at midnight and was subsequently in no mood to appreciate the pleasingly aesthetic way the morning sunlight shone through the leaves, dappling golden hieroglyphs onto the grass. He was, however, in the mood to give his absolutely mental flatmate a piece or five of his mind.  
Unsurprisingly, however, the culprit was nowhere to be seen.

***

I need you to stop off at the gardening store and get 5 packets of Wildflower Mixed Seeds.  
SH

John?  
SH

***

“…ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous, you can’t expect me to have two of them, what if they breed? John won’t be pleas – oh. Hello John.”  
Mycroft was back again, sipping tea calmly in Sherlock’s armchair as Sherlock stomped around the room voicing his apparent displeasure at something very, very loudly.  
John pretended to smile, and walked into the kitchen to unpack the groceries.  
He heard the two muttering for a moment, and then someone (probably Sherlock) threw something against the wall. Whatever it was, it didn’t sound like it broke.  
When John resurfaced, tea in hand, Mycroft was gone. Sherlock was shockingly not gone, but instead bending down to pick up the small rock he’d thrown. It had dented the wall. When he straightened up and saw John, he looked a bit sheepish.

“Are you going to finally explain what’s been going on?”  
Sherlock sighed, and bit his lip, and looked everywhere except John. John just waited patiently.  
“Well, it’s a bit complicated –“  
“Then explain it carefully.”  
Sherlock fiddled with his cuff. “It’s quite a long story – “  
“Well.” John barked a laugh. “I have all evening.”  
Sherlock sighed again, and pouted a bit, and sat down in his chair. John perched on a boulder.  
“We’re having some guests. Come to stay. Here. For a bit.”  
John frowned, processing this. “Why?”  
“Can’t tell you. Government secrecy and all.” He growled. "Mycroft needed a favor."  
“Ah. That’s why you’ve been cross.” Sherlock looked sheepish again.  
John took a sip of his tea. “So. Why do we need all this?” He waved his unoccupied hand, gesturing to the room. “Are our guests fairies, then?”  
He’d meant it as a joke, a feeble attempt to ease the tension between them, but Sherlock had just tightened his lips and grimaced.  
“What. You. You can’t actually be serious. Fairies, Sherlock? Really?”  
But Sherlock was already halfway across the room when he’d started speaking, and was locked in his room by the time John had finished.

***

I got ur flower seeds  
JW

Sherlock?  
JW

Oh come on, I didn’t mean it like that  
I was just surprised  
JW

Please come out of your room  
JW

***

They are arriving next Saturday at 11am.  
You may want to be present.  
SH

***

Sherlock was dozing in his chair in the morning. Four new crates were stacked in the corner of the kitchen. The seed packets had been opened and were empty.  
There was a cup of tea on the bench. It was a little cold, but made exactly how John liked it.

***

One week later and the living room was fully transformed. The grass was covering the whole of the floor, and the trees reached the ceiling. There was a small, circular fishpond sitting in one of the back corners, and the wildflowers had bloomed spectacularly in the areas Sherlock had planted the seeds.  
There were large, thick wooden gates fixed into the doorways to the kitchen, the upstairs and Sherlock’s room. They were massively heavy, with iron hinges, and only a fingerprint scanner, which a pair of faceless men had installed one evening, could open the locks. Only Sherlock, John, Mrs Hudson and presumably Mycroft were able to open them.  
John wondered aloud what kind of fairies needed two-tonne doors to keep them from getting into the rest of the house. “Clever ones,” Sherlock answered, and smirked when he thought John wasn’t looking.

***

The flat was practically humming with the energy Sherlock was giving off. He couldn’t sit still, instead pacing up and down the room, muttering to himself and sidestepping rocks and plants.  
At exactly 11 o'clock, there was a sharp knock at the door, and John opened it to be faced with a short, thin man in a lab coat, followed by a short, stout man and a tall stout man carrying the biggest crate yet.  
With directions from the man in the lab coat, and Sherlock, the men set down the crate and promptly left. The man in the lab coat handed Sherlock a small stack of files, and memory drive on a chain and a ringbound book with the words ‘SPECIMEN #2B12 AND SPECIMEN #15H4’ printed on the cover in bold black lettering. Then he left, wordlessly.

Something in the crate shuffled, and scratched at the front. John twitched, but stood his ground. After locking the things he had been given in the kitchen, Sherlock cautiously approached the crate. Lifting one long finger, he punched the code into the keypad on the side.  
The one of the things in the crate hissed a little as the bolt unlocked. Slowly, silently, Sherlock motioned for John to step out of the way as he swung the door open.

Everyone held their breath.

A nose; a small, white, shiny, almost humanoid nose poked out from the front of the crate, followed by a pair of bright green eyes set into a light brown face. A light brown _furred_ face. The creature – fairy – whatever it was had pointed ears, not unlike a deers, and a pair of pale antlers poked up from a head of slightly lighter brown hair.  
The creature sniffed the air, and crawled out from it’s crate. Standing upright, it came just up to John’s shoulder. It was covered all over in the same brown fur, dotted here and there with little white spots.  
She – and John was sure it was a she, it looked just like a woman but with deer….bits – looked at the pair of them for all of three seconds, and then fled to the other side of the room, behind some trees, her little white tail flashing as she leapt.

John just gawked after her, and then turned to Sherlock. The insufferable git was smirking again. 

Silence fell momentarily, and then, completely without warning, a second creature flew out of the crate and landed on John. It looked like the same species as the first one, but it was larger and of a lighter brown. It’s antlers were much bigger, those of a stag, and they protruded from a mop of messy dark curls.  
 _Familiar_ dark curls.  
As familiar as the sharp grey eyes that were staring down from a familiar, and yet so very different face.

 

“John. I would like to introduce you to the newest additions to our flat.  
Mary is the female, obviously.”  
Sherlock walked over to when John was still staring up into the radically altered face of his best friend. He saw Sherlock’s shoes come to a stop just by his head.

“And this, John, is Fawnlock.”

**Author's Note:**

> So. Obviously, this is a totally implausible scenario. For one, Mrs Hudson would NEVER left Sherlock put a fishpond in. But I just thought "Hey, what if?" and then barfed out this lovely.....thing.
> 
> I wasn't planning on continuing this, but I might change my mind. Maybe. If I can be bothered.
> 
>  
> 
> HATERS GONNA HATE  
> IF YOU DON'T LIKE FAWNLOCK THEN I'M SORRY FOR RUINING YOUR DAY  
> BUT LETS ALL BE ADULTS AND NOT INSULT MY SEXUALITY IN THE COMMENTS PLEASE THANK


End file.
